"Tassels on Confederate flag finials???" Topic

I just finished up my 28mm ACW project, and I think I may have made a mistake that I need to correct.

For both my Union and Confederate commands stands, I used flag poles and finials that have tassels hanging off them.

However, once I thought about it and then began to research it online, I was hard-pressed to find any original confederate battle flags that have tassels, be they silver or gold or any color for that matter. Now of course it's quite possible and likely that if an original confederate battle flag had tassels, they would have been removed at some point if the flag had been taken off the pole after the war. Or they may have worn down and simply frayed away. Any number of things could have happened to them in the post-war years. I didn't find a single image of an original confederate flag that was accompanied by tassels.

I did see tassels show up in several collectible figurines, and one artist's rendition of a Confederate charge:

HOWEVER, I looked carefully at about a dozen Don Troiani paintings that depict Confederate battle flags, and NOT ONE have tassels of any kind. The flags are tied to the poles and the poles do have a finial, usually a spear head. But no tassels are to be seen anywhere. I would have to assume that Troiani would certainly have done his research and would have found out to the best of his knowledge if the original battle flags depicted in his paintings had tassels or not.

Which begs the questions: Did original Confederate battle flags ever have tassels? Should I remove the ones I have on my Confederates command stands?

I do not use tassels on any of my Confederate flag bearers that I have done in 28mm or 40mm. I also have never seen them depicted as such. But if I already had them finished with those, I would probably just leave them. If you have some units with and some without, just gives you more of a variation.

@WarWizard,

Thanks for your insights and experiences with this, much appreciated!

So one more interesting side note to this. I also looked at several pages of Google searches for 28mm Civil War armies. And it seems that the vast majority of modelers/gamers indeed do not include tassels with Confederate flags.

There was ONE notable exception, which I decided to follow suit on.

Several modelers added tassels to the Lousiana Tigers' flags. I am wondering if there is a source somewhere that shows this which is what this modeling choice is based on.

So, what I ended up doing was I removed the tassels from all my generic Confederate regiments, but left them on my Lousiana Tiger unit. This seemed to make some logical sense as they are a unique unit and stand out, so the tassels just add to that aesthetic.

I feel satisfied and fairly confident after the little bit of research I did that most Confederate battle flags during the Civil War did NOT have tassels but only brass finials.

I don't use tassels as the few Confederate period flags that I have seen either don't have them or have very small blue and gold tassels that would be hard to see in any scale below 54mm

Are the tassels attached to the finial, the pole, or the flag itself?

I ask because I thought I'd help by looking at a poster I bought showing 20 or so flags from Alabama regiments that were on display at the state Archives and History Department in 1996, when I visited Montgomery. The flags were over a century and a quarter old by then and had seen hard use in battle. After the war, some had been turned over to the Federal government, which had eventually returned them to Alabama. Others had been secretly taken home and hidden away so the Yankees didn't get them. I can see rips, threads, and bits of cloth hanging down on the staff side of the flag.

Grelber

A flag book on etiquette book states that fringe around a flags cloth is for indoor use only.
Tassels are the cords and bunting that hangs from the flag pole.

As Time Portal say, indeed the finial is solidly attached to the top of the flag pole as a separate item. The flag is tied to the pole as are the cords and bunting.

I use tassels when I have them. I like flags so the more the merrier.

No tassels .